Category Archives ⇒ Quaker

As the blog name implies, I am a mem­ber of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, known col­lo­qui­al­ly as Quak­ers. Many of my blog posts deal with issues of our soci­ety and its inter­ac­tions with the larg­er world. I gen­er­al­ly only include my own posts in this list. I share many many Quak­er links in my Links Blog cat­e­go­ry and on Quak­erQuak­er.

Impor­tant Posts:
The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion (2003)
Peace and Twenty-Somethings (2003)
We’re All Ranters Now (2003)
Pass­ing the Faith, Plan­et of the Quak­er Style (2004)
Quak­er Tes­ti­monies (2004)
Hey, Who Am I To Decide Any­thing? (2007)
The Biggest Most Vibran­ty Most Out­reachi­est Pro­gram Ever (2010)
Get­ting a Horse to Drink (on Philadel­phia YM) (2010)
Tell Them All This But Don’t Expect Them to Lis­ten (2010)

Quaker education in a pandemic

June 5, 2020
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er starts with the recent pub­lic con­tro­ver­sy over Sid­well Friends but then trans­vers­es a long sweep of Quak­er school iden­ti­ty debates, includ­ing one at a parent-led school coop with which he was involved:

The one I remem­ber most vivid­ly echoed the West­town debates: how much overt Quak­erism is too much for a school that was already attract­ing non-Quaker fam­i­lies? After lis­ten­ing to some of this debate, Earl­ham’s Paul Lacey said to me, “Instead of being ‘in the world, but not of it,’ too often we Quak­ers are of the world, but not in it!”
https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​2​0​/​0​6​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​e​d​u​c​a​t​i​o​n​-​i​n​-​p​a​n​d​e​m​i​c​.​h​tml

Reinventing Pendle Hill’s morning worship

May 19, 2020
· Martin Kelley

It seems I tend to for­get to share some of the work I’m most involved with here on the Quak­er Ranter email list and blog. In April I inter­viewed Fran­cis­co Bur­gos and Traci Hjelt Sul­li­van about Pen­dle Hill’s Zoom wor­ship. I’ve writ­ten before that I’ve been par­tic­i­pat­ing a cou­ple of times a week and it fas­ci­nates me. Every­one’s doing Zoom wor­ship, of course, but this one is dai­ly and com­plete­ly open to the pub­lic. It has man­aged to hold onto a dis­tinct sense of place.

Here’s a quote from Fran­cis­co on how the wor­ship mir­rors in-person wor­ship yet has dis­tinct challenges.

This is an ongo­ing learn­ing expe­ri­ence. At any month­ly meet­ing, you will have First Days in which the wor­ship expe­ri­ence is like a pop­corn meet­ing, with a lot of min­istry. Oth­er times, it is com­plete­ly silent. The online expe­ri­ence will be sim­i­lar to that. We are work­ing to find out what resources and sup­port struc­ture we can make avail­able to peo­ple. Some peo­ple real­ize that they have a stage with 140 peo­ple and feel the need to speak not just long, but very often. How can we encour­age Friends to sea­son the mes­sage that they are receiving? 


Transcending Geography

Tran­scend­ing Geography 

Rein­vent­ing Pen­dle Hill’s morn­ing worship.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Jennifer Kavanagh’s parallel universe

May 12, 2020
· Martin Kelley

In Friends Jour­nal, a look at the mys­ti­cal depths of creation:

To live in the world is an explic­it prac­ti­cal accep­tance of the dynam­ic nature of the Spir­it. Our rela­tion with God is not in iso­la­tion, apart from our fel­low beings; as we are blessed, so we too are able to bless. The Spir­it works on us to enable us to give some­thing of what we have received to oth­ers, to act as a mir­ror. So it is that God works not only direct­ly but through human beings, each upon anoth­er. As we open our hearts and receive, so we give to and receive from oth­er peo­ple. How we relate to the world and to oth­er human beings is part of how we relate to God. 

I like the empha­sis on bal­ance she talks about toward the end, “Spir­it with­out mat­ter is as unbal­anced as mat­ter with­out Spir­it, which is materialism.”


A Parallel Universe

A Par­al­lel Universe 

Find­ing the place where deep hunger can be met by deep joy.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Diversity why?

May 12, 2020
· Martin Kelley

Craig Bar­nett on diver­si­ty in our meetings:

But Friends who are not sat­is­fied with these excus­es, and want to encour­age real dia­logue about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of more inclu­sive Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties, are often unclear about the specif­i­cal­ly Quak­er moti­va­tion for this. Are there any rea­sons, beyond so-called ‘polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness’, why Quak­ers should have a par­tic­u­lar con­cern for the diver­si­ty of our Meet­ings and our movement? 

It’s good to ask these ques­tions but Craig’s answer feels half-hearted to me. It boils down to Quak­er process: we can make bet­ter deci­sions if we have more diverse per­spec­tives. That’s cer­tain­ly true, but the prob­lem could just as eas­i­ly be solved by dis­solv­ing the Friends move­ment and join­ing in with more diverse com­mu­ni­ties (some­thing indi­vid­ual Friends have done). Ask­ing peo­ple to join us because it will solve our prob­lems isn’t a very strong mar­ket­ing pitch. What is it we pos­sess that we should be shar­ing more widely?


One Wall, Two Prisons

One Wall, Two Prisons 

There seems to be a tra­di­tion­al list of excus­es for why so many Quak­er Meet­ings fail to reflect…

transitionquaker.blogspot.com tran​si​tion​quak​er​.blogspot​.com

Sidwell’s Quaker Values

May 11, 2020
· Martin Kelley

Steven Davi­son on Sid­well and Friends schools’ use of “Quak­er values”

The SPICES rein­force the decades-long trend in lib­er­al Quak­erism of defin­ing Quak­erism increas­ing­ly in terms of our “val­ues” and our out­ward prac­tices, rather than by the con­tent of our tra­di­tion and our spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. Our “spir­i­tu­al­i­ty” is to look to the Light with­in us for guid­ance and to make our cor­po­rate deci­sions in a meet­ing for wor­ship held under the lead­er­ship of the Holy Spir­it, not by look­ing to a check­list of behav­ioral guide­lines and then remold­ing them to fit our desires. I sus­pect that Sid­well Friends School has some Quak­ers on its board, in its staff and fac­ul­ty, and among its stu­dents. But does that mean that it makes impor­tant “stew­ard­ship” deci­sions in a Spirit-led meet­ing for worship?

Sidwell’s Quak­er Values

The Quaker values of a Quaker school questioned in The Atlantic

May 9, 2020
· Martin Kelley

The elite Sid­well Friends accept­ing $5 mil­lion of emer­gency Coro­na small busi­ness relief mon­ey has been float­ing in the news for over a week now but this arti­cle in The Atlantic hits where it hurts, focus­ing on the school’s use of “Quak­er val­ues” to jus­ti­fy its actions. It namechecks John Wool­man and the Fry fam­i­ly, then quotes three promi­nent aca­d­e­m­ic Friends (David Har­ring­ton Watt, Paul Ander­son, and Stephen Angell).


When Quakers Become Takers

When Quak­ers Become Takers 

Sid­well Friends, one of the nation’s most elite pri­vate schools, cites its reli­gious val­ues in seek­ing gov­ern­ment money.

The Atlantic The Atlantic 

A few thoughts: it’s great to see an arti­cle on Friends actu­al­ly go out and inter­view Friends. The reporter obvi­ous­ly knew that focus­ing a cri­tique on “Quak­er val­ues” would get a reac­tion from some quarters.

There’s a great con­ver­sa­tion about this on a Face­book thread. Paul Ander­son says he was selec­tive­ly quot­ed and told the reporter that a case could be made that Quak­er fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty might well pre­clude using endow­ment funds for oper­at­ing expenses.

We Began to Sing

April 27, 2020
· Martin Kelley

There’s a 24 minute film about the music min­istry of Friends Annie Pat­ter­son and Peter Blood (and by exten­sion Pete Seeger) pre­mier­ing as a YouTube Live event this Sun­day. Here’s part of Peter Blood­’s email to me:

I thought Friends would want to know that the live world pre­mier of the film “We Began to Sing” is hap­pen­ing this com­ing Sun­day May 3rd at 3pm EDT. (Pete Seeger’s 101st birthday)

The film includes footage of time we spent with Pete Seeger at his home before his death and from a num­ber of our sin­ga­long con­certs includ­ing ones orga­nized Friends meet­ings in Toron­to and in Burling­ton. We talk a lot about how our work is con­nect­ed to Quak­er tes­ti­monies around peace, racial jus­tice, etc. 

After the 25 minute film there will be a dis­cus­sion on how peo­ple are car­ry­ing on this work with the film’s direc­tor and 4 oth­er musi­cian activists: Reg­gie Har­ris, Emma’s Rev­o­lu­tion, and Bil­ly Bragg.

Here’s the YouTube Live link. You can check out the trail­er here: